This is Andrew Hovell's blog. He lives in Northern England. He plans for a living. He likes tea

November 27, 2014

One of my many failings is my useless sense of direction. SATNAV and Google Maps are a godsend for a numpty like me.

Blatant excuse to show this..........

I was lucky though to have grown up in a time when there were not the tools to do it for you. The AA Route planner and real maps became my friends.

And I got very used to being lost. Got used to not panicking, leaving enough time in the first place and getting there.

Which means when the tools let you down (and they frequently do) you actually want me in the car with you.

When it comes to the tools for our job, media agencies tend to be amazed how loads of creative agencies you will have heard of don’t have some of the basic planning tools.

I don’t mean the sexy stuff like TGI Worldpanel, NVision or the latest YouGov Profiles doo dah (you can get a watered down version of Profiles here).

Stuff like basic TGI, Mintel, Touchpoints or access to WARC.

Now these tools are bloody useful of course, but they have problems.

TGI is based on claimed behavior and as has been said ad nauseum, people rarely say what they do.

Touchpoints is more diarised of course, and real time reporting means you get a decent idea of what people do. But no clue about how they feel about it, or why they do what they do.

Mintel is really someone else’s opinion on market share and TGI. And don’t believe their observed trends – it usually means it has been observed twice.

WARC case studies are really helpful for all sorts of industry stuff, case studies and awards papers are great for inspiration but every single one is a representation of a perfect world, where everything works like clockwork, where there has been an ‘invented crisis’ and some earth shattering insight to overcome it. When of course, every agency process is a variation of chaos, post rationalization and gut feel.

The tools are great for the ‘sell’ – case studies and data that justifies the thinking are great.

But the problems with tools is they’re too easy.

They keep you at your desk, settling for easy answers that at best tell you ‘what’ rather than ‘why’.

They allow you to have an opinion and then justify it.

Rather than finding a fresh perspective.

They allow you to have a point of view on your target customer without ever having met them.

They are Trojan Horses of the obvious.

Now, of course, creative folks without the tools can be VERY guilty of assertion without making any effort to prove it.

And some quotes from Trendwatching or NVision loosely linked to your ‘insight’ don’t count.

But the good organizations are great at having an informed opinion by constantly going out and meeting their customers, reading what they read and doing what they do.

I think a great example was when AMV wanted to prove that Sainsbury’s customers sleep shopped, so they filmed a Gorilla roaming about instore, being mostly ignored by customers and showed it to the client.

Deep insight you won’t get from TGI.

Aligned with the fact that most bought cookbooks are left unread you have a lovely tension between the pressure of habit and routine and the pressure to be a ‘foodie’ you get ‘Try something new today’.

So.

By all means use the tools, but only as a starting point and by way of the final ‘sell’.

Please do the desk research, all the crumbly stuff out there on the web.

By you can’t beat leaving your desk and actually being your audience.

Because the problem with relying on Satnav, and planning tools, is that you don’t know you’re lost.

November 25, 2014

Some of the specifics - you know, programmatic buying, blind networks etc.

This stuff is important as I’m getting more convinced that, whatever kind of agency you are in, you need to get to grips with the nuts of bolts of the technology that’s out there and how content and stuff tends to actually get in front of people.

I suppose it’s like great Formula One Driver know their cars inside out and work with the engineers as much as possible.

This matter firstly because of first mover advantage. If you’re first to take advantage of new technology or media stuff, you get the chance to do something really special.

Subservient Chicken springs to mind.

As does this Honda video – a genuinely ‘interactive’ video that integrates with the story.

It also matters because it’s how you put things together that matters. Which means a fundamental grip of what works and what works together.

This great Yeo Valley case study wouldn’t have got so much traction on the back of one hero spot without working so well with social media.

Broadcast working with Facebook was fundamental to this Yorkshire Tea campaign.

What is also true of the last two examples, is how they are still TV campaigns.

Not TV as we use to know it, but television still.

Because, despite the emerging tradition to kill off telly, it’s still the most efficient channel for building business profit, against a whole range of secondary objectives.

It’s just that it’s role, and how it works with other channels and assets HAS changed.

Funnily enough, there’s evidence it’s also the most efficient and driving genuine widespread word of mouth.

Which brings me back to that training.

They made a fair point, that we have to assume that whatever content you put out there can be played with by people on all sorts of networks. There is little you can do about it, so you may as well embrace it.

But what they didn’t say was that you will be very, very lucky if anyone can be bothered, if you intend it or not.

And you have to assume they won’t, which is the most commercial way of looking at things.

Since, as has been discussed by cleverer people than me, it’s the light buyers that notice a brands stuff the least that matter for growth the most. The people the least likely to engage.

The only point of people getting involved with your stuff is how it will extend your reach, to infiltrate the barrier of indifference most of us have for most of the things we buy with some sort of social proof or whatever.

They used these examples to show the power of people playing with your content and getting involved.

But nothing would have happened without, of all things, a finely crafted ad that, yes, was really cool and funny, but also dealt with a specific truth about how shower gel gets bought (by women for men) and a bigger truth the brand could play with –what it means to be a man in our porous, ironic culture.

So don’t forget, be a digital engineer, its essential these days, but don’t forget to understand some older fundamentals too.

Basically, few people care, and the role of people that do is to make them notice.

I was reminded last week that the internet grew out a US military drive to increase security.

That’s right. It’s not up there with moveable type of course, but the internet has still created a seismic shift in freedom of information and control of content.

Out of a drive to limit it.

Whereas the World Wide Web was one the unexpected by-products of setting CERN to send atoms whizzing around and smashing into each other.

Which goes to show that when you set out to do stuff, not only do you not know where it all may end.

If you open your mind to the possibility, all sorts of wonderful things can tumble out along the way.

It can be the exact opposite of what you intended in the first place.

I guess that’s why science funding is so important. Just by trying to do all sorts of improbable stuff, we often get far more unexpected value.

Perhaps that’s an argument for more learning for learning’s sake and a subtle swipe at those who see education only in terms of economic ROI. But let’s not go there.

Looking at the day job, it’s why I think pitching is healthy, even if you don’t win.

The tight deadlines, adrenalin and the way they bring teams together can bring other benefits.

Great ideas can develop along the way to save for later, along with the main crux of your pitch.

Moreover, if you put together a pitch team of folks that don’t usually work together, it’s great for creating an even closer knit agency, while the getting used to other views and frames of reference develops everyone’s world view and skill set.

It’s also why planners should be as interested in as much non-work stuff as possible.

Great ideas are as much about drawing new connections between things as ‘bolts from the blue’. The more fodder you have, the more likely you’ll produce the goods.

Put another way, read, watch and experience as much as you can, you never know when it might come in handy.

November 24, 2014

If that wasn't enough, he has his own football team kit and happily chases the ball with his little friends every Saturday morning.

I wasn't ready for this picture. He's all grown up.

I still remember the first time we brought him home like it was yesterday.

Of course, to be honest, there were times in the last five years when I wanted some time alone. Or just a sleep in.

But these moments when he's suddenly all grown up make me want to re-tread every single moment with an even greater awareness and attention. Now he plays by himself more. Now, when his friends are around he sometimes forgets we're there.

Each has been very different, starting with a creative agency getting to grips having to do more than traditional ads, right at the start of the original ‘What do about the internet?” question, when agencies began to think being able to design and build websites.

Blogs were a long way off, let alone anything that looked like social media.

This contrasts sharply with my experience these days in media agencies.

They’re absolutely on top of their game dealing with the continuous upheaval and change their industry faces.

Communications strategy is no longer owned by the creative (or digital) agency and, to some degree, nor is core brand strategy. How can it when a huge proportion is what gets planned, across paid and earned I hasten to add, doesn’t actually need much stuff created for the client by an external agency?

(Can I just say I bloody hate the term ‘brand planning’ or ‘brand strategy’. Yes, I’ve seen the same numbers as you, that show the payback from great campaigns that build and refresh memory structures etc.

But this is merely a constant need over time to reach as many buyers as possible with stuff that is consistent with, and develops, core associations in the mind.

Rarely is the immediate PROBLEM the brand. The problem is nearly always about removing specific reasons not to buy. Defining the issue, then going about the job of solving it.

Anyway)

So many modern campaigns include content created in partnership - with the people that own the media, or folks at an even sharper end of creativity – film makers, writers, technology outfits and whatever else – ‘strategy’ no longer means what you fill the ads with.

Now, as a strategy type in a media agency, you’d expect me to say that.

But the reason I jumped ship from the creative outfit a worked with wasn’t just down to the creative director with the ego dwarfing his skills, or head of new business that thought he was a planner, not even the general complacency of the place.

It was simply that I was getting concerned at the amount of ‘ad tweaking’ briefs I was working on.

After getting used to, in many cases, developing digital stuff around the work other creative agencies were doing, it was a little too much to find in latter years, I was mostly being given some core thinking from the media folks.

And lots of it was pretty good too.

In fact, it seemed that much of the innovations and drive to solve business problems rather than just ‘marketing’ or even ‘creative’ problems was coming from the media folks.

So here I am. Probably quite well qualified to comment on what’s different between creative/digital/media agencies and what is the same.

5 things that are the same

The other agencies are charlatans. They don’t work as hard, they get paid more, they’re not held to the same high standards as you are. It’s so easy on the other side, you’ve often thought of jumping ship for an easier life, to make a bigger impact and get paid more.

Clients just don’t get how hard you work, how you’re always juggling, how their briefs are never clear enough. They always brief you at the last minute and expect a response now. But when it comes to invoices, they pay as late as possible and query everything.

Suppliers to agency folk, researchers, media owners, production companies, tech companies, printers etc think agency folk don’t get how hard they work, how they’re always juggling, how their briefs are never clear enough. They always brief you at the last minute and expect a response now.

Many agency folk jump ship and work on the client side, only to get a nasty shock at the stuff they have to deal with, things well outside their experience or skills. Like dealing with a supermarket buyer if you’re in FMCG. Like dealing with sales team. Like being actually responsible for sales. Like working in a normal office without a groovy coffee machine. Like having to spend 90% of your time having to deal with stuff that is nothing to do with ‘campaigns’ or ‘communications’/ They miss the good old days.

They wish they were paid more, they hate the new world of procurement and know for certain the other agencies get paid more than they do.

5 Things that are different

Creative agencies secretly wish it was 1995 again, they could just make ads and bamboozle clients. Media agencies are torn between the simplicity of the old days where you could just negotiate the right amount of TVR’s – vs the brilliance of the new world where they can be lead agency all of a sudden. Digital agencies wish it was 2003 again when no one understood what they did, including themselves, but they could charge the earth for it. PR agencies don’t care when it is, as long as no one asks them to report ROI in the detail everyone else does.

Creative and digital agencies rarely have lunch breaks. Media agencies nearly always have lunch breaks and will not answer the phone to anyone between 1 and 2 pm. PR agencies are out to lunch all day.

Creative agencies spend ages on two IPA Awards year to prove the stuff they do works. Media agencies report on everything they do, reach is actually a serious measure. Digital agencies can prove everything they do, clicks are a serious metric. PR agencies have got to grips with the new world of accountability and do far more than equivalent media value and share insightful stuff like ‘likes’.

Media agencies have ‘invention’ or ‘content’ departments to disguise the fact they’re doing more creative and want to do even more. Creative and digital agencies have ‘creative departments’ (so little imagination) and planners that innocently trot out media recommendations in the guise of ‘brand behaviour. PR agencies do PR.

Creative agencies make their money charging a lot of time for a make-believe process. Media agencies make their money on commissions and charging time for a make believe process. Digital agencies charge for what they can get the client to understand. PR agencies are lovely.

November 21, 2014

One of the benefits of the new job is that only two minutes’ walk from a decent pool.

The other is that it’s the kind of place where people actually take a lunch break.

So it transpires that a few days a week, I’m in the pool for a go half hour.

Now half an hour for swimmer isn’t much.

When I was training as a boy, we did about four to six hours a day. There wasn’t a day when my body didn’t hurt. I don’t mean the actual training, I mean the ache in my muscle after. The only thing that would stop it is more training.

It’s not even much next to what I was doing a few years ago to train for the Great North Swim – about a solid hour a day.

But now I’m riding around 20 miles a day, it’s not about the fitness and stuff, it’s about just doing it.

My obsession with getting on the road bike is all consuming, but my first love with always be swimming.

Because I will always be a clumsy fool on land, but when I get in the pool, suddenly my body assumes an air of grace. It knows this is something it likes to do well.

Also, cycling is freedom but riding is solitude and for an introvert like me, being alone with your thoughts is a rare pleasure. When I used to train properly, it was far from lonely, with all my team mates, united in agony and loving what they did. But now, there isn’t a silence quite like being underwater.

So how is it going?

At first, muscles I forgot I had woke up in flaming torture.

Then they calmed down.

My feel in the water was dreadful. That’s the thing swimmers need the most, and what disappears the most quickly if you stay out of the pool.

But it’s coming back.

While all the hours on the bike mean stamina isn’t a problem, as far as the lungs are concerned anyway.

What still hurts are the arms and shoulders.

Anyway, as embracing my long lost lover has been great, especially as it coexists with my new flame, my beloved cycling.

Well it’s a sad day today as Rob Campbell shuts down his blog indefinitely.

It's not because of this video........

It’s not because his employer has told him to.

It’s not because the odd bunch that comment have finally got to him.

It’s not because his best friend has asked him to cease and desist publicly admiring his genitals.

It’s not even down to his considerable holiday time being cut back.

It’s because Rob is expecting his first child very, very soon. A lucky little boy to have a Daddy like Rob.

And not just because he will be the first in school to get whatever sad gadget is out this week.

Once his Dad has had a play.

As much as Rob tries to hide his kind generous spirit, that’s the man that comes out over years and years of posting every day.

He is one of the most thoughtful people I’ve never met.

Rob is also evil, somehow I’ve been maneuvered into seeing Queen live in January, all at the hands of this evil genius. I hate Queen, white hot hate and yet I live in fear of actually liking it and having to admit this publicly –along with the obligatory selfie.

In fact, the only good thing to come out of the death of another planning blog is that I can’t be publicly ridiculed there.

November 19, 2014

It's a nice little window into what people in the UK care about right now, but more than that, it's a study into how research makes people tell lies.

It's evidence based, full of real data from real base sizes.

It shows how the same group of people can claim to 'think/feel/do' one thing.

Then claim to 'think/feel/do' something totally opposite.

Even in the same questionnaire.

Everyone is usually at least two people - how they see themselves and how others see them.

This get's resolved a little as people get older.

But this has only been complicated by two develops in recent times.

First, the porous nature of modern culture. There is so much choice of what to experience and 'how to be' that people genuinely are different versions of themselves in different situations and different groups.

Second, the way today's thirty and forty somethings are much 'younger' than generation before and actively try to avoid growing up.

Then there's social media, where we're seeing folks projecting a more 'perfect' social self, an idea of who they would like to be,rather than who they are.

For example, it's quite cool (people say) in the UK to have a work ethic and look disciplined, so loads of folks are exaggerating how much they go to the gym and what they do there.

Just the data tends to show people claim to dismiss 'celebrity' yet the Daily Mail website is one of the most popular sites in the world.

So it's totally authentic for me to moan about work commitments getting in the way of time with the kids.

Then moan about time with the kids getting in the way of cycling in other company.

Both statements are true and authentic.

Which makes research and 'insight' bloody hard.

It means that if you come across a neat little insight, it's probably only half the story.

It means we should look for tensions and contradictions more. It means we're on to something.

It means we should avoid asking people direct questions, or at least, look for connections, patterns and tensions in their answers.

The tensions are the insights!

It means that 80% of market research findings are, at best, questionable.

I know that tapping into all that WW1 stuff around at the moment should create some natural traction.

But I do wonder if this..

Will be seen as a tune free version of this..

Not to mention, I wonder if people who think about things a little less, might react a little adversely to something as serious as millions of men giving up their lives, in service of selling turkey and tinsel.

Winning Christmas is really important commercially and much of that can come from making people feel something profound, but I question the relevance here, the 'sharing' present element feels too bolted on.

Borrowed interest can be really powerful, but you need to get the relevance. I wonder if folks might like the ad (if they can't remember Macca) but not attribute it to Sainsburys.

November 12, 2014

I read something or other from the APG, a summary of one of their speakers events.

Someone made the point that while there is an established link between creativity and effectiveness, there is less of a link between 'strategy' and effectiveness.

The evidence of creative payback comes from linking performers in the IPA Databank to creatively awarded campaigns.

The evidence of lack of strategic payback comes from the lack of APG Award winners in the IPA's.

But this is highly flawed..............

First, the IPA Databank is made of those who had the data that proved effectiveness. Mostly, those that could pay for, or had econometrics in house.

This is a very small sample of ALL communications campaigns.

Moreover, they tend to conform to what the IPA is looking for - prove traditional media is alive and well.

Which brings me to creatively awarded campaigns. Most creatively awarded campaigns are not 'effective'- let alone have won an IPA. And what drives creative awards is rarely stuff that would excite the non-creative community.

This is a little like the APG Awards. They are not really about effectiveness, they're about showing how clever you are. Hugely post rationalised case studies built on what other planners might like to hear.

You could say that creative awards and APG Awards are specialists talking to themselves, basically showing off to each other.

One final point, coming back to the IPA Awards. I'd argue that this is the best we have at showing strategy, only in that they tend to outline a clear problem, strategy and then claimed effect.

At their best, they define a clear problem and role for comms to judge results against. Which is really the basis of good strategy.

But proving the benefits of having people who's primary role is strategy? That goes well beyond a final sales affect or whatever the payback measure is.

From internal perspective, there is the role as buffer between suit, creative, client, media buyer, digital strategist and whoever else. By defining a clear jumping off point for everyone.

There is the role of non-threatening sounding board for everyone.

For clients, there is the role of someone who cares about the business. Not the work, not the plan and not the agency profit.

There is help with the 'sell'. Most agencies talk bollocks, I've often thought that planners make the right thing easy to buy and easy to sell on to the board for clients and such. They make it simple, understandable and compelling.

The (much hated by planners) but much appreciated role by everyone else of workshop facilitator.

I'm saying that much of the value of a strategy person isn't just in formal ROI. It's making life easy for everyone else.

I sort of know the stuff I've done that has 'worked'. I know the stuff that hasn't. You just know, so do clients.

Evaluation is critical and should never, ever be dismissed, but I'd argue the value of a strategist is been dismissed because they do less strategy and more 'ad tweaking' or they focus on communications problems rather than how comms can solve BUSINESS problems.

Or they are hidden away from the client, or don't want to meet the client that often. Or hide in their ivory tower until it's time to push out the brief.

Or they think they're the only one who can do 'strategy' v liberating the thinking of everyone around them.

I guess I'm saying it's the intangible as well as the tangible benefits of a planning type that need to be taken into account.

And it's down to planners to get their hands dirty, be generous, ego free and do what's needed to be wanted in the room.

November 06, 2014

It doesn't matter how many times you change jobs, the first two weeks are all about mouth shut, ears open, working out who can sort IT for you, remembering names, making friends with reception and office managers and nodding a lot while you work out what on earth everyone is talking about.